Associations between language disorders and symptoms of socio-emotional behavioural problems in 3-year-old children
Year: 2007
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Children with communication-disorders are “at risk” of additional problems in social, emotional and behavioural development. Speech and language are intimately involved with other areas of development. Thus it might be expected that children with a significant handicap in this area of development would be handicapped in other areas of development as well. Research is needed to further explore the nature of the relationship.\nIt was proposed that children with language disorders would have disproportionately high rates of socio-emotional behavioural difficulties. The sample was from the Autism Birth Cohort-study (ABC-study), a sub-study of the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort (MoBa).\nParticipants were recruited into the MoBa study. Parents completed questionnaires that screened for social and communication disorders at 36 months. Children who screened positive were invited for a full clinical assessment. In addition a control group of randomly drawn children from all participants in MoBa were invited for assessment. This study includes 35 children diagnosed with a language disorder as well as 25 children from the control group (mean age 42 months). Analysis of children’s language in a mother-child play situation was conducted. Measures of intelligibility (INT) and mean length of utterance (MLU) were compared to socio-emotional behaviour as measured by the Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment (PAPA).\nAn weak association between language disorders and socio-emotional difficulties was found. Exploring the relationship further results showed that a receptive-expressive language disorder in combination with low intelligibility were a risk-marker of externalising behaviour problems. Children with three or more symptoms of externalising behaviours in addition to low intelligibility were at risk of internalising behaviour problems.
Author: Mari Vaage Wang
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2260735524